Another tear slides down his cheek as he takes in another ragged breath, staring blankly up at the ceiling above him. His music comes in loud from his earbuds, but he canāt bring himself to turn it down. Thereās no point, anyway. He doesnāt want to hear himself right now. Just feeling the silent sobs wrack his body is enough to fill him with shame for the time being ā he doesnāt need to feel any more.
He doesnāt want to feel at all right now, actually. But he canāt turn his emotions off. Heās high on a mixture of sadness and fear, and he doesnāt think heāll be coming down any time soon.
He would say heās having a panic attack but heās really just hit bottom again and knows it. Itās been happening more and more frequently, these days. Because now, heās out of school and has to face reality. No multiple choice tests or pop quizzes on the 17th century could have prepared him for this.
Heās afraid of what the future is supposed to hold. Heās afraid of what it looks like right now. It looks like nothing. Just a gray path that winds into a black abyss, no light in sight.
He doesnāt know what to do.
So he cries again; tears well up in his eyes faster than he can will them away and then they spill over, and heās heaving again.
Bile rises in his throat as he moves to sit up, but he swallows it down. It burns his throat, but by now heās used to pain ā his arms are still aching from where he drew lines with his razor. They werenāt deep, but there were about eight of them on each arm, and another four on his chest.
He runs a hand through his hair, feels a strand come off in his fingers, and shudders. He knows itās because of the dye and natural causes, but it irks him. He hates seeing stray hairs. He shakes it off, away from his bed.
His stomach rumbles and heās not surprised ā itās almost 4 a.m. and heās been up all night like this, on and off crying and shaking and fear. The last thing he ate was around 11. He doesnāt want to get up, though, so he decides to go hungry, probably for the day.
Heās tried to sleep three times throughout the night and none of the attempts were successful. Whenever he would lie back to try and drift off to unconsciousness, his thoughts about his life and the future would just resurface.
He would picture himself shaking, in the bathtub, slitting his own wrists and not having his parents find him until an hour later when they were tired of hearing the water run. He imagined himself in the fetal position on the floor in front of them, breaking down again, or one of them finally noticing the marks on his arms, or even himself talking to his best friend and asking her to help him talk to his mother about the soul-sucking depression heās been feeling since the sixth grade.
But the insurance papers hadnāt been processed yet so going to therapy or to the hospital to be put under suicide watch would all be paid for out of pocket, and they definitely didnāt have the money now that his dad was jobless. Hell, they didnāt have the money before his father was fired.
He felt himself swaying ever-so-slightly, nausea and fatigue taking hold of him. He wanted to throw up, but couldnāt. The cuts had stopped bleeding hours ago. But the tears never stopped rolling.
He wished he could die, and get it over with already.
But that would cost his family money, too.
And he didnāt know what to do.
